When we were designing the cover of my speculative spiritual thriller, THE GRAIL CONSPIRACIES, a montage of Da Vinci's classic drawing, termed the "Vitruvian Man" on "The Eye of God," the NASA photo taken by the Hubble Space Telescope seemed a natural.
The human mind and consciousness, and the potential of focused intention and expectation, are central to the plot of my self-help book, JOINING MIRACLES.
As it happened, when I was scanning (rather, "focusing my attention") on the science section of Britain's Guardian on-line, I came on the inaugural blog by Mo Costandi, addressing this very issue: his blog bears the intriguing name of "Neurophilosophy," and the article is "The illusion of attention."
Even if your time is short, at least check out the video imbedded there. Funny, in a way, but all too true. And once you've seen the video, you'll be sufficiently intrigued to find the time to read the whole article . . . and the articles to come.
Go to blog Neurophilosophy, article "The illusion of attention," by Mo Costandi
TO READ SAMPLE CHAPTERS OF JOINING MIRACLES
JOINING MIRACLES: Navigating the Seas of Latent Possibility is a fable exploring ways the human mind and spirit can make practical application of some of the findings of today's advanced scientific discoveries on the deeper nature of reality, particularly the overlooked potential of the human mind to shape the reality that we experience.
A hiker, lost and injured in the mountains in a storm, comes upon a small chapel. Carved in the wall are what seem to be some messages in an alphabet that he has never seen before. An old, bearded monk arrives and introduces himself as the Keeper of the Knowledge.
“The Knowledge? " I asked. "What knowledge? Those old carvings on the wall?”
“Those inscriptions convey the core of the Knowledge.”
“But what is this Knowledge?”
He peered closely at me, and I felt he was somehow looking through me. Then he said, “The Knowledge enables one to –”
He cut himself off and shook his head. “No, I’ll not say more. Not now. Not until . . . not until you’re certain you want to know more.”
“No? Why not?”
“Because if you once absorb and learn to live by the Knowledge, then your life will change. Forever. If you absorb the Knowledge, if you make it fully a part of how you view the world and how you live in it, if you live as the Knowledge teaches, then, yes, your life will change forever: You will live better and happier and more productively.”
My ankle was too painful to stand on. I slumped back into a wooden pew. “Change my life? These carvings? How?”
“The Knowledge provides a way of taking active control of the events and circumstances you encounter in life.”
My face must have shown that I didn’t understand. He went on: “In other words, the Knowledge provides a methodology for joining the Reality Tracks that lead to beneficial outcomes.”
I felt my head spin. “Methodology? Reality Tracks? Beneficial Outcomes?” In a sentence, it seemed we had jumped from the medieval to the world of high tech. Was he a Harvard MBA disguised as a 12th Century monk?
“Perhaps you are thinking that a few words carved on an old chapel wall can have no real impact?”
“Something like that,” I responded, trying to be polite to the old monk. He had saved my life, after all, and it was his chapel, his little monastery, his whole world.
“Einstein wrote even less – E=MC2 – and changed the way the universe was perceived.”
“But E=MC2 was . . .” I groped for a way to express it “ . . . was only a symbolic way of expressing a much larger concept.”
“Then why do you assume these messages convey less?”